


White Rabbits and Wormholes

by Dulcidyne



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: 707 Route Spoilers, 707 | Luciel Choi's Route, Abuse, Character Study, Dissociation, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 19:12:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9339047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dulcidyne/pseuds/Dulcidyne
Summary: A billion particles of Saeyoung Choi scatter across the universe.





	

In a house tucked away in the countryside, a boy is locked in a closet. The thin, flat finger of daylight curls around the doorframe to pluck curiously at his ankles and he counts the hours by it, watches the bright digit of pale gold deepen into sunset ochre then grow faint and grey before finally withering to nothing in the dust and dark.

A thin scuffle muffled by the door tapers off into a sniffling whisper.  
  
“Saeyoung--”

“Sshh, I’m hiding,” he whispers back and his reassuring smile can’t be seen through the door but somehow it works its way into his words, like a message that travels on a length of string between two aluminum cans flashing morse-code flickers of sunshine. The sniffles begin to subside. 

A timid rattle reverberates up through the door. The rescue attempt is valiant but futile and they both know it. “But she put you in there. Because of me. You shouldn't have--.”

“Stop worrying so much. I like it in here,” he lies. He’s too big and the closet is too small and too packed so he has to fold his limbs up until they cramp unbearably--box edges and rubber kimchi tub rims digging into his spine. His limbs don't like it. They’re too used to the world outside the closet and outside the house now. Scratched up knees and sun-darkened skin crave long grass whipping up against his shins, warm earth pushing up against his bare toes, and wind catching his second-hand shirt as summer bursts bright and alive around him in kaleidoscope fragments of color and sound.

But he knows if he can stay still long enough, the ache for outside will subside and the pain will turn to numb. He also knows Saeran doesn’t believe him, even a little bit. Saeran always sees through lies like that. The trick is to tell a lie they both can believe in together. He’s good at it. Too good. The Sunday School teacher says he has ‘ _ a healthy imagination’  _ but it sounds less and less like a good thing the more he shares his imagination with the rest of the class.

“Remember--do you remember the story I told you about the white rabbit? The one that goes down the hole into another world”

_ ‘Down a wormhole?’  _ he’d asked the girl from church, when she told  _ him _ the story. Instead of laughing and calling him strange, she pursed her lips up at the sky. Wind twisted and furled the gold of her hair, haloing brilliance around her like a stained-glass saint. ‘ _ I think that’s a very good possibility, Saeyoung.’ _

Pinpricks needle through his legs and he tucks his chin down against his chest as he waits for them to subside. Saeran drags worried fingers against the door. 

“Did you see a white rabbit?”

“Hmm...I think so.”

He can't see anything now that the light prying through the cracks is gone--not even the faint outline of the kimchi tubs pressing against his shoulder, not even the tops of his scraped-up knees. It's the far reaches of space kind of darkness, the kind you find in the gaps left by stars, deep in the dark matter pockets of the universe.   
  
“Are you going to follow it?”

A fidget spasms up in his calf and pain unravels the knotted muscle so fast he can almost hear it snap like a twisted rubber band beneath his skin. He heaves ragged breaths into his worn shirt collar between words, careful not to let Saeran overhear. 

“Not if you’re--not if you're... If you’re here, I’m staying put.” In case she comes.

Fingertips pause on the door. Saeyoung stares at nothing, the nervous thump of his heart loud in his ears.  _ Please, Saeran _ .  _ Go before she finds you again. _

_ Saeran _ .

“Will you come back?”

Saeyoung grins, relief trembling through his fingertips.”What kind of question is that? Of course I will. I always come back.”

On the other side of the door, Saeran is smiling, he's sure of it. There's a happy sound of affirmation, and the rustle of clothing followed by careful, quiet footsteps growing softer the farther they go. Soon he hears nothing but his own rapid breath scratching over his shirt collar.

He’s alone. Saeran is safe.

Saeyoung inhales in one deep, juddering gulp. Darkness and silence are heavy. They drag in his lungs and his chest is already sore with the effort it takes to wring eddies of nothingness up and out of his ribcage.

There is no sunlight to count time by anymore and whole centuries pass by between every one of his trembling breaths. Remembering everything he can from Rika’s books keeps him busy for a few millennia but too soon, the nothing begins to creep into his skull, slipping dark, mad tendrils of boredom into his thoughts until they too desert him. 

Can darkness have weight? One of the books says light has no mass so it doesn’t make sense for the absence of light to feel like it’s crushing him. But it does. Even through his nerve-dead skin, he feels the voids of the universe pulling him close, their incomprehensible mass sinking through planes of reality like lead marbles dropped in taffy. 

The closet is gone, the house is gone. There's nothing but darkness and silence and he’s a white rabbit, tumbling into the vast unknown. He’s traveling faster than light. Faster than sound. So fast, his unwieldy body snags on its own mass and begins to unravel at its molecular seams. Strings of electron probabilities in snapping chemical bonds fling off his carbon atoms like beads. 

He’s too numb to feel any of it. But if he could, he'd sob with relief and not fear as muscle and bone frayed away into the deep, impenetrable dark.

_ I always come back. _

A billion particles of Saeyoung Choi scatter across the universe. 

He’ll come back. That much wasn't a lie. But he won't come back the same boy he was before she locked him the closet for sneaking food to Saeran. Parts of Saeyoung are already lost forever--gobbled up by black holes, gas giants, and star plasma. He’ll be riddled with bits of emptiness where those parts of him used to be and the emptiness will make it easier to tunnel out of reality into cold, unfeeling space only to come back with more and more missing.

But he  _ will _ come back. This time.


End file.
